Tuesday, August 30, 2011

What is loosened on earth will be loosed again. We need to always remember that traps can be avoided. A “Think Different” mantra is a good one to have handy. Who’s going to believe that “Think Different” would have blood smears involved in a process of freedom? Would you have participated in this first Passover? Just because Moses says so? His track record wasn’t the greatest. If pests and boils won’t work, why this internal, passive approach? Would something in you have been set free to try anything? And when one “anything” turns out to at least be coincidental, does that get so enshrined that it must then be recapitulated, at least metaphorically, eternally? Does ritual have to be be liberated from being ritual before it can liberate?

Looking at this from a vantage point after an Exodus, we wonder about the reversal of calling G*D to come to us when the real trick was to have G*D pass over us, miss us. You just never can tell with G*D.

You may have been trying too hard, looking for a magic fulcrum point from which the world might be moved while what is needed is not that particular, but guerilla graffiti.

Monday, August 29, 2011

If another member of a deeper than casual relationship who could turn you in to the authorities for being a member of a subversive group (and what is a church if not subversive?), should not treat you as they would want to be treated (its all too easy to eternalize and external and call it sin when against you and well-intentioned misunderstanding when you behave the same way) it would be wise to find a way to deal with that before betrayal gets added to the mix.

Of course this presumes that a magic spirit can be organized to resolve conflicts and if it cannot that the course of action left is to dismiss them with prejudice (note how “majority rules” works here). In this case it is understood that both would have a strike against them if they now went to the authorities, so casting out a minority is a recommended way to go.

Question: Does this process work in such conflictual settings as the politics of today’s church that models all too closely public institutions (versus being in tension with said institutions as the earliest church was)?

Question: Does this process ultimately bind or loose what might be meant by a “kingdom of heaven” coming to earth?

Question: Is leaving us as the deciders of binding and loosening, an action of a binding or a loosening by G*D?

Where two are company and three are a crowd and the inherent tensions of both can flare up at any time over any issue, it is comforting to know that whatever this heaven to earth business might be about is already underway. So gather together for an opening - practice being ready for it and jumping before it is fully present.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Indeed, keep your eyes open for movements within a universe of marvelous possibility. You will see what we call “G*D at work”.

Even more, you can have a part, “Y*U at work”.

We can say, “G*D sent his servant Moses”. Even more, we can say, “Moses went on a larger mission.” Without this balance any subsequent institution will need to continually make revisionist statements to explain any next marvel.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

We forget that Moses was a lay person. It was his father-in-law, Jethro, who was the priest. Moses knew enough to follow his curiosity rather than box it in to follow a ritual or doctrine that would discount such mystery as a bush that burned without being consumed or one hand clapping.

Even here, mystery is both something to honor, don’t come any further, and experience, take off your sandals and wiggle your toes in it.

What is mysterious is how miserable people are for no good reason. Suffering because others have power is not acceptable. Deliverance is findable in the midst of folks who will no longer be silent or fear only for themselves.

Deliverance is always quite personal and risky. It is a mystery why such as Moses or you or I finally respond to the need to stand up to power, no matter what the cost. There is no explaining it, only a thankfulness when done.

It is no mystery that we would try to wriggle out from the need to decide to follow where mystery leads. One of our wriggles is get things defined sufficiently to reduce the risk. However, mystery won’t settle for our wriggling thus. A mystery based on inclusion and communal action rather than representative, personal power, never settles for denotations, but revels in connotations - who am I? I am who I was when I’m not who I am or will be. Go ahead, give in now before your head spins off.

Who will be a next Moses? No telling. All we know is that it won’t be a priest.

Monday, August 22, 2011

It has been said that “The only thing that is real is the being in you that is going to die”. (Carols Castaneda) and that “Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, an arm's length behind us. Death is the only wise adviser that a warrior has. Whenever he feels that everything is going wrong and he's about to be annihilated, he can turn to his death and ask if that is so. His death will tell him that he is wrong, that nothing really matters outside its touch. His death will tell him, 'I haven't touched you yet.'” Likewise this Castaneda insight, “Only the idea of death makes a warrior sufficiently detached so that he is capable of abandoning himself to anything. He knows his death is stalking him and won’t give him time to cling to anything so he tries, without craving, all of everything.”

These perspectives help us look at Jesus’ understanding of his life, while alive, while not yet dead but moving in that direction. Time is precious, too precious to spend in fear, in denying death. The stumbling block of denial still reaches up to trip us. We still need to hear that losing our life in life, not expectations, not denial of death, is what will focus us. To simply wait to hear that we have died is to not taste death before its time.

Spoke yesterday with a dear man who has heard from his doctors that he has less than two years to live. Cancer and an infection will have their way. And he continues, not arguing, bringing peace where he can - not in a forced way because time is short, but naturally, because this moment is still available.

Too often we consider that death has a last word, while all it can do is advise us in the present about engaging life that is significant enough to echo on. May you not get caught by the stumbling illusion that death is more powerful and less helpful than it really is. Walk on.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Who do you say that I am? Who do you say you are? When tracking well we say we are members of one another. Which part of a “Son of God” are you? Pinkie, Pate, Patella?

We receive meaning from the body as a whole as well as from our particular locus. We all hold the keys to love and life. There is no holiness but social holiness!

If there is one corrective to today’s resurgence of fundamentalism (one part is more important that another part) it is this sense of universal social holiness where none will be redeemed until all are. This plays out in economics as well as in theology. You might think of a tax as a binding principle that keeps us together even as death drives us apart.

There is a cost to a body of many parts. Each part cannot maximize its own wealth (its predominance among the many) but must play and pay its part. The greater the perception of the part, the more it costs to be a part of the whole.

To wrestle with the purpose of taxes is valuable community building. To put taxes beyond our decision-making is the same as putting G*D beyond our current time and space (no pie in the sky, by and by). Taxes do for a healthy community what serving one another does for the body of Christ. Taxes will always be with us, not because they are imposed from the outside, but because they are a constituent part of being in community. We need to talk about them more.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

In sorting folks out, life changes the sort. Who’s king now? It makes a difference to many.

In one realm a mere son of god can do well while in another it takes The Son of GOD to even come close to breaking even.

Instead of looking at titles such as Pharaoh or midwife, which can begin to distract our eye from what is needful, we might do well to keep our eye on where the next good might be done and be clear about the temptations that lead to a next harm, even a small one.

It turns out that a king eventually takes a back-seat to a daughter and a midwife and a mother and sister of one who will do in the king. How did they pull it off? Well, they lost their fear through a picture larger than the current power structure. This loss of fear made room for longer-term decision-making. They chose “pity” [2:6]. Each expressed it in a different way, but tears of the past, present, and future were heard and responded to. As a result, past tears were reconciled, present ones energized, and potential tears entered into with purpose.

The same process is available today - what good needs to be done; what harm avoided? This doesn’t need one to be King or Son of God, simply human, created in an image of those who show their steadfast love through action of pity more than piety.

Monday, August 15, 2011

This questions brings us to the work of trying to figure out who "666" is or "The Son of God", according to the criteria set out. Can we squish or puff-up someone so they will fit the definition? That’s all that is available to us.

Once past accademic questions of role and definition, we can get to a better question, “Who am I, to you?”

When the response is, “I better see an expansive and expanding love when I am engaged with you”, we know we are in a place just right, a valley of love and delight.

It is not the giving of a right answer that brings Peter any keys of authority, it is his own engagement with G*D. And so it continues to this day.

Who do you say the people are that you are engaged with this day, this week? Does that bring you closer to participating in doing all the good you can? If so, start loosing and binding. If not, time to move on.

Oh, by the way, don’t keep this a secret. Start acting on it and promoting the appreciation of more and more levels to your various relationships.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

And yet the church has a whole series of tests to apply to the usefulness of those gifts and one’s calling according to what is perceived as its continuity. If a gift or calling doesn’t fit within the benefit structure of the church, such are not confirmed and are denied.

Here the Church is at odds with its G*D. Though, many a sociopath has been keep out of leadership roles because of this winnowing of gifts and calling. And, no matter how strictly the church applies its current criteria to a perpetual abundance of scattering gifts and call, there are still sociopaths who can con the system.

“God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.” [32]

What an intriguing process. At least the church can claim to better follow this construct. It is very good at highlighting “disobedience” that it might appear merciful after some appropriate number of pounds of flesh have been sacrificed.

There are many ways to try to keep many alive. These can contain the infamous, “We had to destroy the village to save the village.” Under Joseph’s leadership, many lost their land and freedom for a better chance at survival. Were they better off? Certainly his family became better off, until Joseph’s efficient planning was forgotten.

How might you keep “many alive” this day? How might you keep yourself alive this day? One way is to refuse to label and be labeled. Drop the titles; claim your name.

Monday, August 08, 2011

We can hear it in every generation - it's not about who you are, it's about what you do with who you are (hate the sin, but love the sinner). That's very neat, but not real. Our being and our doing are intimately connected with one another.

A Canaanite woman (2 strikes for being both a woman and a Canaanite) calls out, puts a claim on mercy being extended. According to the earlier statement, one would expect Jesus to pay attention to what the person did/said, not who they were. Mercy was asked for and yet it was denied. Regardless of who is doing the asking, when asked, mercy is expected.

The disciples were also caught up in the doing and being, but in the other way around.

Note how the general cry for Mercy finally has to come down to both one's being and one's doing. Eventually, "Mercy!" needs to become "Help me!"

Questions come, just as in the abortion debate or any wedge issue - the daughter is healed, a fetus brought to term - and now what - simply being female is a problem in a patriarchic system that we are still too much a part of, whether in Sudan or America. What does it mean for this daughter to be healed in this moment only to be discounted later? It might be claimed that she is returned to only having 2 strikes against her (female and of another tribe) instead of 3 (female, of another tribe, and certifiably crazy). Discrimination doesn’t need any basis in reality, for it can always call her less than human again for being a woman or a foreigner. This story is about Jesus and his disciples not being able to initially see faithfulness when wrapped in the colors of another gang.

Seems a lot of us, in Peterson’s words, are “willfully stupid” or keep having the same limited perception that needs continual correcting. We keep trying to separate that which can’t be separated. Whether about being and doing or varieties of faith.

Basic take-away - a daughter was healed, a society wasn’t - ask for more, go for 0 strikes. We need to pay attention to both a needed band-aid and systemic causations. If you are called to work with band-aids, put them on with gusto and support those working on causation. If you are called to shift paradigms, give it your all and encourage those who are caring for immediate needs. May your doing and your being reveal faith in an expansive and expanding “Love”.

Thursday, August 04, 2011

Faith in anyone claiming extraordinary power or access to G*D is misplaced. They cannot control the heights or depths of lived experience. Faith worth the fear and trembling required for it's implementation asks for that deeper place of engaging your own journey toward a larger universe.

While appreciating the security of plausible deniability, the built-in opportunity to blame someone or something else, ultimately it is going to come back to what has been done by you with the opportunities you have before you. What were the roadblocks you put in the way of every person, regardless of their "status", to engage their journey to an expansive and expanding love? Distinctions between our various journeys aren't all that great, but the ways in which we can hinder one another seem to be multitudinous.

All who call out, who are journeying, receive what is needful. Claim the abundance available and humbly ask for more - or, party-on, dude!

Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Some people think, (your-name-here), that some things are "meant to be."

Meant by whom?

Not me,
The Universe (www.tut.com)

It is comforting to think that everything is going to turn out well. Jesus doesn't stay in meditative prayer but comes walking on the water in stormy weather and we take a step or two further than we ever thought we might.

It is encouraging that enslavement will turn around and we will be in charge (talking about your tax and saver - see Joseph in power).

However, neither of these sort of next steps stop with the desired outcome. There is more ministry and death to face. There is not just the enslavement of one, but of a whole extended tribe.

Choosing where to cut the storyline tells much about who we are.

Does John the Baptizer's death end with Jesus finally alone or you walking a step on frothy waves? Does Joseph's enslavement end with his coming to power or the enslavement of his family? Does Paul correctly set this choice aside by saying it is not about either result (go to heaven - go to hell) but doing what is needful in the moment, regardless of the consequence?

So, what is meant and by whom? Where is thanks directed and from whence is more asked?

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Ah the joy of loving too much. Here it brings an unintended consequence of envy, jealousy, and hatred from others.

A reason given for loving too much is that it is established in old age when a new perspective on preciousness begins to set in. The run-of-the-mill births before this were just that. They happened. We won't comment on Joseph being a first son of Rachel.

At any rate, a long and colorful garment set Joseph apart from the others. How Fabulous it must have been! This was an outward and visible sign of preference by the patriarch Jacob/Israel.

An inward sign of preference by G*D is an ability to interpret dreams. This is not as noticeable, unless Joseph opens his big yap. A braggart from a trickster is quite a gene pool.

The brothers might well reason that Joseph carried recessive genes and it would be appropriate to send him packing with those other recessive gene holders - the Ishmaelites - like to like.

And so 20 pieces of silver enters the symbolic jargon of relationships. You might wonder who got the 20 pieces of silver in the recent American debt ceiling negotiations. I'm sure someone thought a deal of delayed death would be worth getting their cut on the side. One can only hope that some strange twist, to be revealed much later, after much more difficulty, will have what was intended as a win-win for the brothers and a lose-lose for Joseph and Jacob be turned around as a benefit for all (at least for a short while, until we again forget our blessings and focus on our fears).

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We bring Progressive Christian celebrative and educational events to Wisconsin that the expansive love of GOD will be clear for all to experience. Please visit our Kairos CoMotion website for more information. ///// We have been nurtured in the United Methodist tradition and practice our tradition of bringing together "acts of piety" and "acts of mercy". ///// Click Here to signup to receive the postings here as they are made. ///// We appreciate your presence and support. ///// We have 10 years of postings organized by Book, Chapter, and Verse - you are welcome to browse.